Saturday, June 27

Big Game

Area Premiere June 26 – July 2

(2014) dir Jalmari Helander w/Samuel L. Jackson, Onni Tommila, Ray Stevenson, Victor Garber, Felicity Huffman, Jim Broadbent, Mehmet Kurtulus [110 min; DCP]
The latest from the director of the twisted Christmas cult classic Rare Exports, BIG GAME is a rollicking adventure in the vein of 1980s teen action movies. Like an Amblin Entertainment film amped up to 11, BIG GAME begins with thirteen-year-old Oskari (Tommila) being sent out on a coming-of-age solohunting trip by his father. At the same time, an apparent terrorist plot causes Air Force One to crash into the same Finnish wilderness that Oskari calls home. When the boy discovers the President (Jackson) cowering in an escape pod with the bad guys closing in, he quickly becomes an unlikely protector for the most powerful man in the world.

Tommila and Jackson make a great on-screen team. Tommila is both tough and vulnerable as a freshly minted teenager who may not be as ready to bring home a prize trophy as his dad would like. And Jackson plays the President, not in his usual tough guy persona, but as a vulnerable intellectual who likes to sneak cookies against his wife’s advice. When Oskari displays his real wilderness skills and when the President rises to the challenge placed in front of him, BIG GAME becomes one of the most rousing and purely entertaining films in years. Much like last year’s surprise hit Snowpiercer, BIG GAME was originally set to have a direct to cable release and skip Boston theaters altogether but we enjoyed it so much at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival that we simply couldn’t let you miss out on the fun of seeing this awesome movie on the big screen!

★★★★☆ “A sparky romp that recalls the children’s action movies of the 1980s – The Goonies, The Golden Child or Home Alone.” – The Guardian

“Big Game is big fun, a terrific genre film that once again shows that the Finns can make films of this nature that rival those from anywhere else in the world.” – Jason Gorber, TwitchFilm

“Even before Samuel L. Jackson shows up as President of the United States and braves the Finnish countryside, it’s clear that ‘Big Game’ will be a special kind of guilty pleasure.” – Eric Kohn, Indiewire